Forum Discussion
Files on demand - difference in 'locally available' and 'always available' files
locally available files are ones you've already opened whilst online, or created while online, or created recently on another device while you were online; they stream down to your PC so you have them if you need them, but they're not guaranteed to be there. If you haven't opened the files in a while and the space is needed to stream down other recent files to make them available locally, they'll revert to being online only (AFAIK that's based on heuristics and will vary by free space, not a strict counter). if you want to guarantee that the files are always available offline, right-click and mark them as 'always available offline'. You can mix and match both kinds inside a folder.
The local file is cached and if the drive gets low on space, some of the oldest files that have not been accessed in a while may be moved back to a cloud state to free up space. Any files marked as "Always Keep On Device" will always stay and not be moved back to the cloud state, even if drive space is low.
We will add controls in the OneDrive Admin to manage this functionality at a future date.
Also, check out my blog post here on some of the switches you can use today to control Files On-Demand here.
Stephen
Stephen,
it would be nice if some type of basic control for how "locally available files" were handled was added to the standard OneDrive (consumer) settings as well, not just OneDrive for Business. To be clear, I'm referring to how it is determined when "locally available files" are reverted back to "online-only files".